10 ms·

If you'd done the same thing with a bust of your mother 10 years ago, they'd have covered it up as well. Try the same thing (with Snowden, or your mother) in F

by hullo 12y ago

If you'd done the same thing with a bust of your mother 10 years ago, they'd have covered it up as well. Try the same thing (with Snowden, or your mother) in France or China, and see what happens. Just because they parks department is doing their job doesn't mean democracy is ebbing.

anon808 12y ago
Or maybe they would've removed it, and until they did left it uncovered. Neither of us know what they would've done. Not sure what China or France doing things has to do with how we do things in the US.
- hullo 12y ago
  Well I can tell you 15 years ago Giuliani would have been up there with a sledgehammer himself taking it down, holding a press conference, and vowing the harshest consequences possible once the perpetrators were tracked down. By that scale can we say that the state of democracy in the US is actually greatly advanced?
  - aceperry 12y ago
    I agree. The response depends on who is in charge. Maybe in a place like Berkeley, birthplace of the free speech movement, they might consider keeping the statue there.
- pandybar 12y ago
  Don't worry too much, U.S. couldn't become China in one day just like you couldn't build Rome in a day. I notice this little detail in the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, five years after 1984. After the students build the parts of the statute named Goddess of Democracy, the state security bureau declared that any truck drivers helping them would lose their license.[0] At first this amused me a little bit, seeing how pathetic the security bureau was, but soon I feel so frustrated and disappointed be cause it hasn't been any better about politics after 26 years. Of course they have learned how to frame citizen under the coat of "Rule by law". Government without its chain is just like the Smaug. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_of_Democracy http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_of_Democracy
hristov 12y ago
I don't think so. If it is something unauthorized they probably would have removed it in due time. I.e., they would have taken a couple of days to hire professionals to do it. Now they immediately cover it up so that no-one can see it while they arrange for its removal. Why? Obviously they do not want anyone to look at it before it is removed. But why not? It is certainly not offensive in any way. It may prove to be a minor attraction and it will get Brooklyn in the national news. It really does remind one of soviet style suppression.
- rosser 12y ago
  > It really does remind one of soviet style suppression. If by "one" you mean "you", maybe. No-one is getting gulag-ed or shot for doing this. To liken this response to Soviet-era human rights abuses betrays a pretty myopic view, IMO.
  - cryoshon 12y ago
    Hey man, we have Gitmo and all of our black sites around the world. Human rights abuses happen there with 100% certainty and 0% transparency. Oh yeah, and we have the world's largest prison population by far. So maybe not a real Soviet style gulag, just a bunch of smaller gulag-like places to store our undesirables. Sure, it's not as bad as the USSR, but why is this sort of thing permitted whatsoever in a democracy again?
- superobserver 12y ago
  Not just Soviet-style suppression, but state sponsored censorship. While the local rules of the park may deem that this is simply vandalism, I fail to recall such instances in the US demanding this kind of censoring and it should be pointed out a little more saliently in the article for appropriate effect.
  - sigzero 12y ago
    You are kidding right? This has nothing to do with "Soviet-style suppression, but state sponsored censorship". It is the Park service doing its job. It IS vandalism. Plain and simple.
pharke 12y ago
Do you have examples of precedent where this occurred in the U.S.? If not, you're simply speculating based on your own opinion/mood/blood sugar level. Graffiti is rarely covered up so quickly unless it is found to be particularly offensive. My personal belief is that this statue was deemed to be politically offensive and inciting as well as likely to draw media exposure and so was quickly removed from view even though this is not a required step in the process of restoring the monument to its former state.
- ics 12y ago
  Err... we're talking about an installation in one of the most heavily trafficked park systems in the world. I'm surprised it stayed up long enough for some stranger to get a video of it. Sure, there are neglected parks in NYC but the Ft. Greene / Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument is not one of them. http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspections/page/1 http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspection... For fun.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  There have been many different opinions expressed here with regard to how quickly a politically innocuous statue would have been taken down, with different people claiming "it just makes sense" that such a statue would/wouldn't be covered and removed as quickly. This is a nice illustration of why the human intestine has such limited epistemic utility: my gut and your gut will rarely agree and there's no way based on gut feel alone to decide which if either is correct in any given situation. So the right thing to do now is to put up a politically innocuous statue and see how long it lasts, or to find cases that are closer to this situation than graffiti, which is both commonplace and relatively less obtrusive, and less likely to be taken for an "official" statement of anything. I used to live beside a park where a local artist erected an extremely strange Transformer-like statue in a central location that took several weeks to be removed, but it wasn't in the US and it was in the poorer area of a small town, so there are too many differences to draw any useful conclusions from it.
davorb 12y ago
There was a guy that placed a bust of himself in a University library in Sweden. The bust is still there. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Flundagard.se%2F2009%2F05%2F18%2Fnu-ar-bystkupp-jonas-en-klassiker%2F&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

by hullo 12y ago

anon808 12y ago

Or maybe they would've removed it, and until they did left it uncovered. Neither of us know what they would've done. Not sure what China or France doing things has to do with how we do things in the US.

hullo 12y ago
Well I can tell you 15 years ago Giuliani would have been up there with a sledgehammer himself taking it down, holding a press conference, and vowing the harshest consequences possible once the perpetrators were tracked down. By that scale can we say that the state of democracy in the US is actually greatly advanced?
- aceperry 12y ago
  I agree. The response depends on who is in charge. Maybe in a place like Berkeley, birthplace of the free speech movement, they might consider keeping the statue there.
pandybar 12y ago
Don't worry too much, U.S. couldn't become China in one day just like you couldn't build Rome in a day. I notice this little detail in the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, five years after 1984. After the students build the parts of the statute named Goddess of Democracy, the state security bureau declared that any truck drivers helping them would lose their license.[0] At first this amused me a little bit, seeing how pathetic the security bureau was, but soon I feel so frustrated and disappointed be cause it hasn't been any better about politics after 26 years. Of course they have learned how to frame citizen under the coat of "Rule by law". Government without its chain is just like the Smaug. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_of_Democracy http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_of_Democracy

hristov 12y ago

I don't think so. If it is something unauthorized they probably would have removed it in due time. I.e., they would have taken a couple of days to hire professionals to do it. Now they immediately cover it up so that no-one can see it while they arrange for its removal. Why? Obviously they do not want anyone to look at it before it is removed. But why not? It is certainly not offensive in any way. It may prove to be a minor attraction and it will get Brooklyn in the national news. It really does remind one of soviet style suppression.

rosser 12y ago
> It really does remind one of soviet style suppression. If by "one" you mean "you", maybe. No-one is getting gulag-ed or shot for doing this. To liken this response to Soviet-era human rights abuses betrays a pretty myopic view, IMO.
- cryoshon 12y ago
  Hey man, we have Gitmo and all of our black sites around the world. Human rights abuses happen there with 100% certainty and 0% transparency. Oh yeah, and we have the world's largest prison population by far. So maybe not a real Soviet style gulag, just a bunch of smaller gulag-like places to store our undesirables. Sure, it's not as bad as the USSR, but why is this sort of thing permitted whatsoever in a democracy again?
superobserver 12y ago
Not just Soviet-style suppression, but state sponsored censorship. While the local rules of the park may deem that this is simply vandalism, I fail to recall such instances in the US demanding this kind of censoring and it should be pointed out a little more saliently in the article for appropriate effect.
- sigzero 12y ago
  You are kidding right? This has nothing to do with "Soviet-style suppression, but state sponsored censorship". It is the Park service doing its job. It IS vandalism. Plain and simple.

pharke 12y ago

Do you have examples of precedent where this occurred in the U.S.? If not, you're simply speculating based on your own opinion/mood/blood sugar level. Graffiti is rarely covered up so quickly unless it is found to be particularly offensive. My personal belief is that this statue was deemed to be politically offensive and inciting as well as likely to draw media exposure and so was quickly removed from view even though this is not a required step in the process of restoring the monument to its former state.

ics 12y ago
Err... we're talking about an installation in one of the most heavily trafficked park systems in the world. I'm surprised it stayed up long enough for some stranger to get a video of it. Sure, there are neglected parks in NYC but the Ft. Greene / Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument is not one of them. http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspections/page/1 http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspection... For fun.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
There have been many different opinions expressed here with regard to how quickly a politically innocuous statue would have been taken down, with different people claiming "it just makes sense" that such a statue would/wouldn't be covered and removed as quickly. This is a nice illustration of why the human intestine has such limited epistemic utility: my gut and your gut will rarely agree and there's no way based on gut feel alone to decide which if either is correct in any given situation. So the right thing to do now is to put up a politically innocuous statue and see how long it lasts, or to find cases that are closer to this situation than graffiti, which is both commonplace and relatively less obtrusive, and less likely to be taken for an "official" statement of anything. I used to live beside a park where a local artist erected an extremely strange Transformer-like statue in a central location that took several weeks to be removed, but it wasn't in the US and it was in the poorer area of a small town, so there are too many differences to draw any useful conclusions from it.

davorb 12y ago

There was a guy that placed a bust of himself in a University library in Sweden. The bust is still there. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Flundagard.se%2F2009%2F05%2F18%2Fnu-ar-bystkupp-jonas-en-klassiker%2F&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...